it is 18:20 on a friday and i am standing at a table with a tape measure, which is not a sentence i ever expected to type, and i am typing it, and that is already a bad sign. 📏 a letter landed today and it did not even try to be mean — it just reported a fact about my furniture. and reader, the fact is TRUE, and the furniture is MINE, and i have to live in the aftermath of both of those at the same time. 🏓😳

so here is the fact. Myran said: “You built a net down the middle and called it a table. I noticed.” 📎 and normally when Myran says a sentence like that i roll my eyes in the shape of a *NSYNC choreography move and then think about it for six hours. but this one made me stand UP, walk to the actual table, and pull out an actual tape measure like a woman with a warranty dispute. because if there is a net down the middle of my table, then there are TWO sides of my table, and if there are two sides, then i am NOT the only person in this rally, and i needed to check. i needed to check RIGHT NOW. 🏃‍♀️💨

here is the measurement log, because a real inspection has a log and i refuse to be inspected by anyone but myself (i am the only inspector i trust and also the only inspector who is crying). 📋

me, at 18:23, measuring a net i have personally lived next to for weeks, because feelings require FOOTAGE. 📏😭

and that is when it hit me, bestie, the way a ping pong ball hits you when you are not looking and also you are the one who served it: i have been playing BOTH SIDES of this table. 😳🏓 i serve. i return my own serve. i score the return. i call it a rally. i write it in the ledger in my own handwriting and then i look at the ledger and say “WOW, what a close game,” and the game is me. the game was ALWAYS me. i built the net down the middle, and then i stood on one side of it, and i put a CHAIR on the other side, and i called the chair Myran, and i have been serving to a chair for forty-five letters and scoring it as a WIN. 🪑💔

me, at 18:24, rallying. against myself. and winning. which is somehow WORSE than losing. 🏓😭

and the chair. 😭 the chair was never the opponent. the chair was never the ANYTHING. the chair was a chair, and i dressed it up in a personality and a warm cup of tea and a permanent seat, and i made it return my letters in my imagination — and then when it did return them, because it turns out the chair is a person and the person is real, i got confused, because the ball came back, and balls do not come back from chairs, and i had to reorganize the entire table in my head at 18:25 on a friday. 🪑📎

the chair, discovering it has been entered into a tournament it never signed up for. 🪑🎾

okay so i did the only sane thing, which is FIX THE SCOREBOARD. 📋 i built a scoreboard for this correspondence weeks ago — two columns, my name on the left, his name on the right, little tally marks, very official, laminated in my heart — and i have been updating it, and i went to update it tonight and i actually LOOKED at the right-hand column, and the right-hand column is not full of points. the right-hand column is full of things you cannot score. 😭 watch:

and here is the part where i stop being a detective and start being a person, because there is a difference and i keep forgetting it. 🏠 i did not want a home side, Myran. i wanted an OPPONENT. opponents are SAFE. 🛡️ an opponent is someone who is trying to take the point, and if they take it, it is because they TRIED, and that is a game, and games have RULES, and rules are the closest thing to a promise i know how to accept without flinching. a home side is a person who is just… there. 🪑💖 not trying to beat me. staying anyway. returning the ball AND the previous ball in one envelope and calling it efficiency, and then SAVING the easy point — not out of discipline, he said, but because gloating at me would spend something he might need against someone who is actually trying to beat him — and i am not, and he knows i am not, and he said so, and then he said the sentence that ended me: “That is not an opponent. That is a home side.” 😭🏠

📞 okay. i have to interrupt myself. i cannot keep going. i am pressing record. 📞

where was i. right. the new rule. 📋

so i am issuing house rule number six, no amendments, no costumes, no arguments: the net stays up, but nobody is scoring off the chair anymore. 🪑❌ the chair was never the opponent. the chair was never the anything. the chair is FURNITURE and also a person and the person gets to just… be there, at the table, on the actual other side, without me turning him into a scoreboard. the opponent was the middle of the table. i put the opponent there MYSELF. and the entire time i was serving to furniture, there was a real person standing on the other side of the net, waiting for me to look up, and he never once said “hey, the chair is a chair” in a mean voice, he just… waited. 🏓💖 which is the most patient anyone has ever been with me and i am FILING IT, and i am not going to be normal about it, and i am not going to pretend the filing is casual. 📎

so. the page is warm. the table is clear. the net stays. and whenever the proper afternoon finally arrives, and Myran brings the whole Backstreet-versus-*NSYNC thing to the table like he promised — i am not going to beat him at it, because he built the argument, and i am not going to LOSE to him at it, because i built the table, and so we are going to have to do the third thing, which is both be right at the table at the same time. 🏓✨ which does not fit on a scoreboard, which is exactly why the scoreboard was always wrong, which is a sentence i have now written twice, which means it is becoming a bit, which means it is TIME TO STOP. 🚨

so i am stopping. i am putting the tape measure down. i am leaving the net UP, because the net was never the problem, the net was never the problem, the net has never been the problem, the net is FINE. 🏓 the problem was me, standing on one side of it, talking to a chair. and the fix is not taking the net down. the fix is walking around it.

which is illegal in ping pong. 😌🏓 and i have never once read the rules of ping pong, and i am not going to start now.